Zakari Chapman

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

I haven’t read the book but I found this to be an adequate origin story for Snow. There was decent character development and the story all in all didn’t have any huge flaws (maybe some questionable moments but nothing I couldn’t ignore), HOWEVER I struggled with Rachel Zegler in this film, her acting felt unnatural and forced as if she’s trying too hard. Might be me being harsh which I fully accept but she was 90% of my issues with the movie. Tom Blythe on the other hand I felt delivered a believable character and really made the role his own, this was the same with pretty much all of the other characters. All in all definitely a movie I would recommend people to watch but not anything ground breaking which is perfectly fine.

Christian Bale was awesome in this movie and nearly every scene with him in it was good. Now the rest of the film was plagued with poor jokes and just the unnecessary requirement to be funny all the time to the point where the jokes were being drawn out and we’re not funny at all. The scenes where they didn’t follow a serious/sad event with a joke or awkward verbal interaction we’re believable and good(mainly the Christian Bale scenes). This is becoming a common trait in the ‘Marvel formula’ which can work on occasion but to have it in every movie is overkill. I would love to see the days of when our heroes took situations seriously and make picked the right moments to make witty and well timed jokes to genuinely makes us laugh come back into the marvel formula. All in all it’s like watching movie ‘The Hangover’ but with evil shadow sorcerers and lightning gods with unusual accents. Very average